Tuesday, January 15, 2013

5 interesting findings from Scholastic's report on digital reading among children

The New York Times reported yesterday that "Digital reading is rising fast among children ages 6 to 17, but this is not necessarily translating into a greater desire to read, according to a report released on Monday by Scholastic Inc.". Here are the most 10 interesting things you can learn from the report:

1. "The percentage of children who have read an e-book has almost doubled since 2010, to 46 percent." This is a pretty impressive figure comparing to the general share of ebooks in the book market, giving you a pretty good indication how common the use of ebooks will be in 10-15 years (like you didn't know..).

2. "During the same period, the number of girls who reported being frequent readers declined to 36 percent from 42 percent." - does it mean that the growing use of ebooks doesn't necessarily translate into reading more books in general? The answer might be found in the next finding.

3. Children "are increasingly using tablets, like iPads, which allow for more activities than just reading. In fact, slightly more children reported having read a book on a tablet than on a plain e-reader device." - it means that they have in their hands a device with which plenty of stuff they can do with it other than reading, so it might not be that surprising that spending more time with the iPad doesn't necessarily translate to more books read.

4."About one-fourth of the boys who had read an e-book said they were reading more books for fun. Boys have traditionally lagged behind girls in reading." - what does it mean in terms of the competition between books and games? Would we see more integration between the two forms to create a more attractive format of entertainment for kids? Probably yes.

5. "Children said e-books were particularly good when they wanted to be secretive about reading. But at night in bed, most children said they still liked to read books in print." - I have a feeling you will receive the same replies from adults!

Yours,

[Image credit: Soppy Chen, Flickr Creative Commons]

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